The Scary Spring Storm
THIS IS A TRUE STORY. ALL EVENTS IN THIS STORY OCCURRED THURSDAY NIGHT, MAY 26, 2011. Part 1...The Storm Rolls In... It was getting towards the latter half of the afternoon, around 6 PM. My mom and I were sitting at the kitchen counter, chatting and finishing up dinner. It was warm out (but not quite warm enough for the A/C), so we had all the windows open. I happened to glance over at the dining room window behind me and noticed very dark clouds rolling in, casting the sky in darkness. I heard thunder in the distance, and figured we were gonna get one of our typical springtime evening thundershowers - fierce but brief rainstorms that occur a lot in May and early June in my location. I resumed the conversation with my mom and then we both got up to put our plates away when the wind - which was originally DEAD CALM - suddenly and DRAMATICALLY picked up, ripping through the windows and blowing a bunch of papers off the dining room table. I thought it would die down, but the wind just kept getting stronger....causing 100 year-old trees to bend and twist in a way I've never seen before. My mom urged me to get in the basement while she got in her car to drive down the street to pick up my sister, who was at a friend's house playing. Ordinarily it would have been a 2-minute walk, but the wind was so strong it was actually dangerous to be outside. I got in the basement and waited on the steps near the door, hoping the wind would die down. The windows were still open, so I could hear it as it ripped across the landscape. It was so loud I was scared a tornado would come and whisk my entire town away. An 11 year-old me eventually started crying on the steps, praying to God to just make the noise STOP. Meanwhile, as my sister was trying to walk her bike down the driveway of her friend's house, the wind nearly knocked her over. At first she tried to ride as the storm rolled in, but my house was in the opposite direction of where she needed to go, and she couldn't do it. So, my mom had to help her load the bike into her Jeep and the two successfully made it back home. At this point, I got sick of waiting and emerged from the basement and shut all the windows, just as the precipitation started. And it came FAST. I had locked the last window in my sister's room just as the rain started coming down. And with the wind, which had calmed only slightly at that point, the sideways-driven rain completely obliterated my view of seeing anything out the window. My mom and sister came home not long after, just as it started hailing. Part 2...Height of the Storm... The hail lasted for five minutes or less. It was generally small in size, pinging off the skylights in the family room and sounding like hammers falling on the deck out back. After the hail stopped, the sky began to take on a greenish color and stayed that way for the rest of the night. It was around this point in time that the three of us gathered in the family room and flipped on the TV, watching Jeff Tanchak give us a detailed update on the squall line's movement. All news stations were focused strictly on this system given its widespread impact Category:Sassmaster15 Category:Real Life Stories Category:Weather Stories